Monday, October 27, 2014

First Published in DelawareLiberal on 10/27/2014 by ProgresssivePopulist

I argue that when you vote, your vote should be for the Party. I do
not buy the concept "I vote for the candidate, not the Party". Sorry,
but it is not unsophisticated or unthinking to vote a straight ticket in
the case of partisan elections. Yes, I know. In Delaware we don't
have straight ticket voting, but you can vote for all Democrats on
November 4, and I plan on doing so.

Candidates align with
Parties. They use their brand. They use their structures, money,
staffs and volunteers. It is a conscious decision on their Party
choice. This means they sign onto the Party platform and align with most
if not all of the stands the Party takes in its platform, written by
activists and Party regulars who craft the positions on issues, debate
them and vote them for adoption in convention.

Parties are a great
hallmark of democracy. They are built by people banding together with
common views on public/civic issues. They were intended as a vehicle to
get those views adopted by a majority and select candidates that well
represent those views.

And their proper role is to hold those
candidates accountable for support for those positions on issues,
including discipline when they stray and rejection when they sell out.
Much of this leverage is overlooked by local and national Party
organizations, which is to overlook a major component of a functioning
democracy.

If a Democratic Party loyalist has an objection to a
candidate based on a visible flaw in their view, they can leave their
vote blank on that candidate. To vote for another Party's candidate in
that office is to vote for the positions and stands of that Party, not
their own Party. That is a betrayal.

Groups, especially Party
loyalists, can and should have sway on the votes and policies created
by candidates who succeed in becoming office holders. Free lancing
candidates have no accountability to those who "brought them to the
table". They are renegades. Rogues. They represent an arrogance that
has no place in a democracy and are more suited for an aristocracy.

Any
Democrat thinking of supporting a Republican on November had better
take a hard look at the Delaware Republican Party web site, which links
directly to the Republican National Committee platform. Apparently they
are too lazy locally to write their own platform and have bought lock
stock and barrel into the RNC's Tea Party world view.

Let me
select a number of the RNC/Tea Party platform positions which most
dramatically contrast with the Delaware Democratic Party and Democratic
National Committee positions on issues. The DDP went to the trouble of
writing a platform. I'd suggest you read it and the DNC document as
well.

The Republicans want to extend the Bush tax cuts while
lowering corporate taxes. This means middle classers pay the tax
freight, if that isn't obvious; but they want to keep this simple, so
they want a flat tax. Ultimately though, their platform wants to repeal
Federal Income tax altogether.

They want to reduce and privatize
Medicare and Medicaid and repeal Obamacare, replacing them with private
insurance operating in a free market. You know, like the good old days
when, without insurance, sick people paid their doctors with things like
eggs and chickens.

Speaking of free markets, they want to free
workers of the burden of collective bargaining and unions. Way too
complicated, especially for employers who surely would do the right
thing and pay a decent wage. Oh, and they advocate flexibility in
workplace conditions, which means deregulating workplace safety and
conditions, hours and benefits.

Regulations? Forget them. They
impede the free market and set industry free to prosper and grow. And
free trade, not fair trade is their way to go, whenever and wherever
industry chooses.

On the environment, coal good; EPA bad. No
mention of the bogus science of climate change and global warming.
Why? Because this is a Judeo-Christian nation and as you know, God
provides for our kind. Especially if we display the ten commandments in
our public squares. And for good measure, it is our God given right to
drill baby drill. And of course because God made us the stewards of
the world, private, not public stewardship of our lands and waterways.

Education.
We're doing just great at the state level with our public schools.
Charters and vouchers are good. The Federal Department of Education are
bad. Home schooling even better. Federal help with student loans are
bad, except for the guarantee part, backing up the private banks who
want no risk of default.

After school, jail's good. Mandatory
sentences really good for those who don't cut it in school. And no
parole for the "dangerous". Death penalty for the most dangerous.

Sex.
Abstinence is really good. Sex education, not good. Condoms, not so
good. Abortion no good. Childbirth great, especially in the case of
rape and incest. Those women's clinics didn't meet
Republican clinical
standards anyway. Federal Stem Cell research, no because they come
from "aborted fetuses".

And once those unwanted children are
born, no food stamps for them or mom unless they are done only by block
grants. And mom is going to have to work, work really really hard for
very temporary help with household expenses.

Families? Only male
female unions, thank you. You know, because it's been traditional for
thousands of years. Were there Adam and Adam or Eve and Eve in the
garden, things might be different. But there weren't. And homes for
families? Sure. But only if financed by private banks, unencumbered by
pesky, nuisance lending regulations.

Immigration. For sure, no federal funds
for college education of illegals. But plenty of federal funds for
those patriot illegals joining our military to get their heads blown off
instead of "our kind".
And speaking of the military. You
Democrats keep your grimy hands off our Pentagon budget. Why? "Peace
through strength". They actually cite American Exceptionalism as given
to us through "divine providence".

Yes, Republicans, God is on your side. But I'm not and no thinking Democrat should be, by voting for your candidates.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

First published in DelawareLiberal on 10/16/2014 by ProgressivePopulist

It is well understood by communications experts that fear is an
extremely powerful emotion to reverse. The RNC is executing a powerful
national campaign of fear, based mostly on ISIL and Ebola. It is
grounded in their national and local messaging strategy that government
doesn't work, especially an Obama/Pelosi government.

The DNC, by
our own Chair's pronouncement a few months back, has no national
branding or messaging strategy. Premise for the 2014 cycle...all
politics are local. That premise has been pretty well debunked a few
years back with the Gingrich Contract With America campaign.

So,
the DNC's major message to us, without reminders as to the central idea
our party stands for, send money. Lots of it. Send more money. Our
fear message? The Republicans are coming. Some of it is actually being
used by local Democratic campaigns to denounce their own party and its
accomplishments of late.

So, America, be very much afraid. No
reminders from the DNC that we have mostly contained radical Islam to
their middle eastern back yard and kept you safe in your own American
back yard and are vigilant on that mission. No reminders that Ebola is
contained in west Africa and we are actively assisting infected
countries to contain the disease there and bolstering our defenses here.

Yes,
memories are short. America is seldom reminded that in the meantime,
this Democratic President and a Democratic congress literally saved the
world economy from collapse, introduced monumental healthcare reform to
provide care for millions previously abandoned, ended two horrific wars
and has made great progress toward restoring a job market that was in
collapse.

The national media, even alternative and social media
has been allowed to fixate on fear, relentless fear mongering on ISIL
and Ebola, with an ineffective PR and public information effort from
the DNC and our Administration.

Local media has been bombarded
with disparate and uncoordinated Democratic candidate and pathetically
little local Party messaging on a myriad of issues, largely overwhelmed
by the audience/readership building stories about ISIL and Ebola. In
the meantime, local Republican messaging programs have been much better
synced with the RNC messaging program.

Save a possible "October
Surprise" from the Obama Administration, I see little prospect of
averting a Republican bloodbath and little prospect of a sizable
Democratic turnout. Maybe the magical new targeting vehicles to
mobilize our Democratic majority will kick in with highly motivating
messages to get us off our couches. But less than a month out, I see
and read little evidence of this.
There's plenty of evidence that fear will mobilize the Republican base and paralyze some of the Democratic base.

Only,
it isn't. This is narrative from historical research on the 13
crusades perpetrated by Christians, in the middle east alone, targeting
mostly Muslims over a two hundred year period. Also targeting Jews and
other Christians who did not swear allegiance to Rome. Hundreds of
thousands slaughtered. Whole cities laid to waste. Middle easterners
are thought to have long memories and a huge appreciation for history.

All
the atrocities endorsed by Pope Urban II and several successors over
this horrific period during the european dark ages and the middle east's
period of enlightenment. Soldier recruits, led by kings and nobility,
were granted huge financial favors and tax exemptions, the right to
pillage and guaranteed a special place in heaven by the reigning
Popes. That sounds familiar too, doesn't it? And led in prayer before
battle by clerics. Familiar too? Much of it taking place in what is
now Iraq, Syria and the "holy lands".

Not much of a battle plan
needed by ISIL. It is all pretty well laid out in the tragic historical
documentation of this region and period between 1095 and 1298. For a
detailed account, check out the writings of U.S. professor Dr. Abdullah
Mohammad Sindi, a middle east authority and historian.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

First Published in DelawareLiberal on 10/5-2014 by ProgressivePopulist

Apparently he's got another tell all book about to come out. Timely,
Leon, given that we've got a hugely important election next month with
your "fellow" Democrats in the cross hairs of the party of hate.
I
say "fellow" Democrats because Leon has always been a guy of the safe
establishment who never had a reformist idea overtake his pandering to
the current order of things.

I can speak with some limited
contact; Leon was a fellow Santa Claran (think Jesuits, think northern
California) in the 50's a couple of years behind me undergraduate. I
didn't like him then because he had the reputation of an ass kissing pet
of some of the key clerics running that show at the time.
Always
in their pocket, always held up as a model of the way people should
be. I knew he'd ascend to the northern Calif. political establishment
and sure enough, after Congress, onto Presidential staffs and leading
our intelligence and defense establishments.

Now, in a most
untimely way, like Hillary. who at least had a early youthful flirtation
with radical thought, he's finding fault with President Obama. For a
while our President was not easily falling for the neo-con, neo-liberal
impulse to kick the shit out of our perceived enemies, asking questions
later.

I continue to be an admirer of this President who, like
Jimmy Carter, has the courage to say things like.....we don't have a
plan yet. The courage to reverse course before engaging us in
catastrophic actions which get people killed really dead. The guts to
do some thinking out loud on really complex issues, particularly of
foreign policy and subject himself to criticism that he is timid or
uncertain. Hell, in some cases he is justifiably unclear of the best of
many lousy, life ending or ruining initiatives.

I want and have a
President who is an adult. Who admits uncertainty and exercises
caution before engaging on an issue or solution. America apparent wants
an ass kicking cowboy who adheres to the policy of ready, fire aim.
They call it being decisive and bold. I call it stupid and
disrespectful of the harm that bad decisions can do to our people.

Look
what ready, fire, aim got us in the Bush era. Deception. Malfeasance
leading up to 9-11. More deception to make it look like Iraq made any
sense. Throwing no-strings attached money at the banking industry at
the onset of the great meltdown, without accountability. the long war.
The list is enormous.

Leon, you and your type are pompous,
self-serving protectors of the establishment from which you came and
with whom you have earned your stripes as their boy. You conflate your
catholic certainty of the "truth" and autocratic infallibility with
leadership.

I want candor. I want, yes, human frailty in my
leaders. I want humanity in my leadership. President Obama is bright
enough to know that he'd become a human punching bag with people like
you. I respect his courage and willingness to lead us through the fog
in spite of this punishment.

About Me

Moved to Wilmington, Delaware in mid-2013. Resided in Houston, Texas for 45 years. A widower, married Julie Jackson in 2007. Retired as a hospital marketing consultant in 2001.Have been a Democratic Party political activist for most of my adult life, organizing and mobilizing for the Party and its candidates. Consider myself a progressive populist. Early career included running communications for 35 campaigns. Have formed and led committees dealing with voter mobilization and precinct organizing, counter voter suppression and strategy.Co-founded the Progressive Populist Caucus of the Texas Democratic Party. Have served on the Texas Democratic Party Platform Committee numerous times. Also an active organizer for the anti-war movement since Vietnam and was active in the civil rights movement.